Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Hobble Creek Canyon part 2

(In order to get the rest of the pictures from the canyon posted, I completely skipped any pictures that didn't have Caleb in them, despite the fact that I still took plenty without him.)

Whenever I was in a picture, I had to ask the children who were also in the picture (usually Caleb) if we were smiling or frowning, just so I could match them. Caleb often answered frowning.


No, the children were not told to be sad for the following photo, that's just how they were all day. We were begging for smiles most the time -- or tricking them out of the kids.




Jacob found a great spot a little ways up the hill for us to take pictures, so we headed on up and continued coercing our children to smile.





Me and Cristal with all our kiddos.


Sitting on a rock up the hill.



Climbing up the hill to see what else we can find.




Caleb reluctantly posing next to a small patch of red leaves.





The kids were done. They were hungry. They were cold. They wanted to go. We were headed back to the car when I saw this gate and being me, needed to go take more pictures. Somehow, the idea of climbing on the gate was appealing to the kids despite the cold and the hungry.






When my card was completely full, I finally gave up my photo quest and we left the canyon.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Jungle Jim's

While staying with my mom in West Jordan, we met up with my aunt Cheryl and all her cute grandbabies and went to Jungle Jim's so the kids could play.

This was Caleb's second time to Jungle Jim's in his little lifetime, and I have to say, he liked it much better this time than he did last time. He liked having all the other kids there to play with, though he'll play with any kids that are around and it didn't matter to him that he was related to these ones. Though it does make me enjoy the pictures more, since all the kiddos in the background are Caleb's third cousins (or is it second cousins?) instead of just strangers.

On the roller coaster -- Christian, Joette's son, and Grant, Jeremy's son, in the car behind Caleb:



Flying an airplane:


Some sort of spinning thing, with Cheryl's knees:


The bumper cars, Grant and Elyssa, Jeremy's kids, in the background:



A little Jeep thing that goes around a track, sitting with Kiera, Joette's daughter:


Riding the carousel:

Monday, October 18, 2010

Hobble Creek Canyon

We went on vacation to Utah. Our first stop was St. George, where the Huntsman World Senior Games were going on. Caleb got to see his Grandpa Bud swim, we did a bit of shopping, and went to a pirate restaurant that Caleb absolutely LOVED. (Although, we didn't eat at the pirate restaurant because my mom had heard the food was awful. But they had a little arcade area that Caleb loved. He was talking about it for days before we went and has been talking about it for the week and half since we went.)

After that, we drove up to Springville to see our friends, the Enszers. Caleb had so much fun playing with the kids, Mirra and Mason. Okay, he mostly loved playing with Mirra, but he tolerated Mason extremely well.

While we were with them, we drove up Hobble Creek canyon to take fall photos -- since, well, Arizona doesn't really do fall where we live.







Mirra was so freezing once we took her jacket away from her. Once her turn was over, she was the only one who could get Mason to smile.



I loved the look of these stairs with all the leaves.





Getting the kids to smile seemed to be an impossible feat, so I decided it was time to throw some leaves and have some fun. Which is when I discovered that the secret to getting smiles was to let them throw leaves at me.






We buried the kids in a pile of leaves and let them throw the leaves. They loved it!





There was a tangle of branches, so I tossed Caleb in and snapped away.





I ended up taking like 500 pictures, so the rest will have to wait...